As the number of commercial and custom software applications in use continues to increase, there are increasing benefits in being able to exchange data between different software applications. For example, it is often useful to be able to exchange data between different software applications of the same type (e.g., competing word processing applications), such as to allow users of one of the software applications to view and/or modify files created by other of those software applications. It can also be useful for applications of related but distinct types to be able to exchange data, such as if they can use the same types of data for different purposes and/or can use the data of the related application type to supplement the data to which they have access.
While various limited techniques exist to allow some software applications to exchange data with other software applications in certain limited situations, those techniques typically lack flexibility and functionality needed for many uses. For example, some companies may each provide multiple software applications (e.g., software applications of different types) that are designed to be able to exchange at least some types of data with each other in a proprietary manner, or such companies may similarly design their software applications to be able to proprietarily exchange at least some types of data with affiliated software applications of other affiliated companies (e.g., partners, subsidiaries, etc.). However, such techniques do not benefit users of software applications from unaffiliated companies in exchanging data with such software applications.
In addition, other limited techniques allow two unaffiliated software applications to exchange data if they are both designed to include the same developer-independent data exchange mechanism, such as each having the capability to store data in the same standardized data format (e.g., in a flat file or by using XML). However, such techniques do not benefit users unless both software applications that are to exchange data have been designed to use the same data exchange mechanism. Moreover, at least some such techniques include other disadvantages, such as an inability to fully represent the data that a software application stores in its own proprietary data files.
The existing limited techniques also do not typically handle situations in which there are multiple users of one of the software applications, such as to prevent modification by one user of data that is in the process of being exchanged with another software application by another of the users and/or to synchronize with other users the data changes that are made by one of the users as part of an exchange.
Yet another problem with existing limited techniques for exchanging data between unaffiliated software applications is that they are typically limited to use with very simple data. For example, a stored text file produced by a word processing program will need to represent only a few data entity types (e.g., individual words, paragraphs, sections, etc.) used by the program, which are each relatively simple (e.g., a character or word may have limited appearance information associated with it) and related to each other in at most limited ways—this makes it relatively easy for another word processing program to recognize and use the instances of those data entity types in the stored text file (i.e., the specific words in the text file).
While inter-application data exchange can be of benefit for many types of software applications and for many types of data, one category of software applications and data for which such data exchange can provide particular benefits includes software applications and data related to project planning and management. For example, various project management software applications (“PMSAs”) are available (e.g., the Microsoft Project software application from Microsoft Corporation, the MinuteMan Project Management Software application from MinuteMan Systems, the PlanBee software application from Guy Software, etc.) that typically provide a variety of functionality related to the details of project planning and reporting, and in performing such functionality typically use data which can be of benefit to and/or available from a variety of other related types of software applications. Thus, the ability to exchange data with other such related types of software applications can provide a variety of benefits to a PMSA and to other related types of software applications.
In particular, the functionality provided by PMSAs typically allows users to define projects by identifying project members and other resources needed for a project, determining project-related tasks and inter-dependencies between tasks, assigning tasks to the project members and managing corresponding schedules, etc, and the data representing a defined project is typically stored in a data file in a format proprietary to the PMSA that was used. Other related types of software applications (e.g., customer relationship management software, employee relationship management software, software to support internal operations of a company such as payroll and human resources, calendar/scheduling software for individuals, high-level project tracking software for an organization, various reporting software, etc.) are often able to benefit a PMSA by providing relevant project-related data, and such other software applications often similarly benefit from the detailed project-related data available in defined projects. For example, a variety of project-related data can be used by and/or provided from these other related types of software applications, such as data about current and potential project members, current and potential project resources, schedules of project members, tasks assigned to project members, anticipated and past project-related milestones and other events or occurrences, etc. PMSAs are also often used by multiple users for a given project, such as multiple members of the project, and thus benefit from techniques that assist in the coordination and management of the access and use of the project-related data by the multiple users.
One related type of software application that receives and provides benefits from exchanging data with PMSAs is a high-level organizational project tracking software application (“OPTSA”). Such OPTSAs (e.g., Professional Services Automation software from Siebel Systems) typically provide a variety of functionality to enable service-based and other organizations to manage services engagements, project deliverables, resources, partners, and financials, such as by performing project portfolio, risk management, and financial analysis to help organizations ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget. OPTSAs typically gather and integrate detailed information of various types, such as by gathering real-time information from all project members and retrieving information about current labor burn rates, fee analysis, resource availability, etc. Such OPTSAs may also be able to track and integrate information for many distinct projects within the organization.
Unfortunately, existing limited techniques for exchanging data between unaffiliated software applications are not generally applicable to project-related data between PMSAs and related software applications such as OPTSAs for various reasons, including the typical complexity of project-related data entities (e.g., resources and tasks, which may each have a variety of associated data items to represent scheduling and other related information for the task) and the inter-relationships between such data entities. For example, defined projects often have a complex hierarchical arrangement of task-related information (often referred to as a “work breakdown structure” or “WBS”), which may include multiple high-level project phases that each have multiple tasks and may have various interdependencies. In particular, each task may be related to a variety of other tasks within the project phase or in other project phases, such as to indicate dependencies in when tasks can be performed with predecessor and/or successor tasks, to indicate one or more child tasks to be completed as part of the current task and/or one or more parent tasks for which the current task has such a child relationship, to indicate other types of inter-task constraints, etc. The inability to easily exchange such project-related data between PMSAs and related software applications such as OPTSAs thus hinders their use, particularly between multiple users in an organization.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide techniques for exchanging data between various related types of software applications, including between software applications with project planning and/or tracking capabilities from multiple unaffiliated companies (e.g., a PMSA from one company and an OPTSA from another company). In addition, it would be beneficial to provide techniques that facilitate data exchange with a software application having multiple users in such a way as to support the use of the exchanged data by those multiple users.